“You can't live on nothing." "I can live on sunlight falling across little bridges. I can live on the Botticelli-blue cornflower pattern on the out-billowing garments of the attendant to Aphrodite and the pattern of strawberry blossoms and the little daisies in the robe of Primavera. I can live on the doves flying (he says) in cohorts from the underside of the faded gilt of the balcony of Saint Mark's cathedral and the long corridors of the Pitti Palace. I can gorge myself on Rome and the naked Bacchus and the face like a blasted lightning-blasted white birch that is some sort of Fury.”

“I remember it all: every word, every breath, every tick of the clock . . . everything that happened is with me forever.I can never forget it.But that dosen't mean I can live it again. You can't live what's gone, you can only remember it, and memories have no life. They're just pale reminders of a time that's gone - like faded photographs, or a dried-up daisy chain at the back of a drawer. They have no substance. They can't take you back. Nothing can take you back.Nothing can be the same as it was.Nothing is.All I can do is tell it.”

“If I can live through this, he thought, I can live through anything. If I can live through this, I WILL live through anything.”

“Night has patterns that can be readless by the living than by the dead.”

“I try to live life so that I can live with myself.”

“Listen to me. I can live without a kidney. I can live without football. I can live without a lot of things. There is only one thing in this world i can't live without. And i'm giving her my kidney so she can live, so we can be together.”